Zenchenko also reported that local state representatives have not harassed the Aliabad congregation since briefly detaining its second pastor, Hamid Shabanov, and confiscating the church library in the wake of the 20 May raid.
"We started going there from Baku and they stopped causing problems," he told Forum 18. The church library has not yet been returned, however.
Aliabad village lies close to the border with Georgia in the north-western region of Zakatala [Zaqatala]. Its 10,000-strong population is largely of the Ingilo minority, ethnic Georgians converted to Islam several centuries ago. The reason the police gave for raiding the Aliabad church on 20 May was that, because the church did not have state registration, it could not meet.
Officials of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations in Baku frequently deny legal status to religious communities they do not like, including non-state controlled Muslims, Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses and others.
Azerbaijan's bureaucratic registration procedures also allow local officials to obstruct a registration application even before it reaches the State Committee. When Forum 18 visited the notary Najiba Mamedova in Zakatala in November 2004, to find out why she persistently refused to notarise the signatures on the Aliabad church's registration application, she shouted: "We don't need any Baptists here".
Unregistered religious activity is not formally illegal in Azerbaijan, though officials often act as though it is. As Zenchenko of the Baptist Union has pointed out, there is a bitter irony in officials obstructing the Pastor Balaev's Aliabad congregation's applications for registration, then punishing it for meeting without registration.
Baptist churches in Aliabad have been repeatedly denied state registration since the early 1990s.
As well as being repeatedly denied legal status over 13 years, Aliabad's Baptists have been subjected to vilification by local officials for their Christian faith. One example of this has been officials denying church members' children birth certificates, as their parents' choice of Christian names were deemed unacceptable by officials of Zakatala Registry Office. Without a birth certificate, it is impossible for children to, amongst other things, go to kindergarten or school, or to get hospital treatment.
Baptists in the area have also faced forced unemployment, postal censorship, literature restrictions, threats and intimidation
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Geraldine Fagan
Moscow Correspondent
Forum 18 News Service
